


Stasis

by kangamangus



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Childhood Memories, Comment Fic, Emotional Hurt, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 19:44:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1870059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangamangus/pseuds/kangamangus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A post-9.07 ficlet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stasis

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a prompt that requested a fanwork based on [this piece](http://therumpus.net/2013/03/for-a-m-1996-2013/) by Jason Novack.

It was just an ordinary house. One story, wide instead of tall, with an open layout. There was no wall between the kitchen and the living room; the only divider was a bar-like counter top that allowed for the positioning of two barstools which, at the time, were still settled neatly in place, discolored but capable of holding a person's weight despite their condition. Dean knows, because he sat in them on more than one occasion, leaving an impermanent _lack_ in the way he disturbed the dust, the stools only partially covered with a sheet of grime when he was done with them. 

It wasn't all that old, as far as houses go. Dean had figured it must have gone up in the 70's, if the wood paneling on the walls and the brightly colored His and Hers bathrooms were anything to go by. It was still furnished, and the flashy floral patterns on the couches in the front room were another testament to a house that was left behind as the rest of the world evolved into modernity. 

It wasn't haunted. Dean thought it was, at first, and that was why he shouldered his way through the door to take a look. He expected a vengeful spirit, or maybe a nest of some kind — _some_ sign of the supernatural. But all he found behind the door was a house poised for life — holding its breath for inhabitants who would never return. 

It's gone. 

Dean stands in the front yard, overlooking the dead space that marks the area where the foundation once rested. 

"What are you looking for?" Sam asks, coming up behind him, rubbing the back of his neck and wearing that pinched, concerned expression that is becoming too familiar to Dean by now — the one that tells Dean that his lies are getting closer and closer to unraveling, that he's in over his head and he can't keep Sam placated long enough for the angel to finish his job and get the hell out. That all of this is culminating to a bad end.

"A house," Dean replies. 

"Why?"

"I wanted to see if it was still here."

He turns and begins walking back to the Impala. 

"Dean," Sam calls after him. A pause. "Are we gonna do this again?" By 'this,' Dean knows he means the not-telling — the vague replies and distinct lack of detail that Dean will offer up to any inquiries. The deflections that will get Sam nowhere. 

"Not if you shut your mouth and get in the car," Dean replies.

Sam looks annoyed as he gets into the vehicle, but Dean ignores him and takes his seat on the driver's side. He starts the car and they drive off in silence. 

Later that night, back at the bunker, Dean does not research the house.

He could, easily. He could pull out the laptop, consult public records, find out who once reclined on those floral couches, sat in those barstools, lived out their lives in that home. He could find out why it was demolished, who owns the land now, if there is a plan to build a new house in its place. 

But that seems wrong, after the time he spent there, following the footsteps of people he would never come to know, sifting through belongings, reading over forgotten grocery lists and calendar entries. He doesn't want to ruin that, doesn't want to mar the memory with facts. 

Instead, he spends the night with a bottle of whiskey and a list of potential hunts. 

"I remember," Sam tells him without so much as a _good morning_ , after some hours have gone by and Dean has downed the majority of the whiskey. He joins Dean at the table, taking a seat. "That neighborhood — we stayed there for a few weeks in between hunts."

Dean replies, less because he wants to go down this avenue of conversation and more because he is too tired to argue it away. He rubs a hand over his face. "You were still in middle school." On the verge of becoming a teenager. There was a distance growing between Sam and their father, but more immediate and apparent was the distance that was growing between himself and Sam. And not because Sam was slowly developing teenage resentment, but because Dean himself was different. 

His time at Sonny's had changed him. He had made a decision to grow up, to make a sacrifice, to say goodbye to any chance at a normal life. It was something he couldn't communicate to Sam and it something his father would never fully understand, because to him, there had only been one answer. 

He always chose family over everything else when there was no real choice to make. At Sonny's, the decision had finally been set against an alternative, had been placed in his hands as _his_. Dean had been caught in the middle, and when he emerged from the decision not triumphant but changed, he had found it difficult to slide back into what little of his childhood had existed — those fragmented hopes for anything normal were once and for all dismissed as impossible.

"You thought it was a job." It isn't a question, though Sam doesn't know for sure. It's an educated guess, and a good one. Why the hell else would Dean have spent so much time there? Why would he have wanted to go back?

"It wasn't." Dean doesn't look at Sam. He squints down at the laptop. 

"You gonna tell me what it was?" Sam's tired of half-truths and fill-in-the-blank problems. Dean knows. 

"Just an abandoned house."

Empty — a life left behind with no one to live it. 

"That's it?" Sam asks, looking doubtful. 

Time stood still in the house. Even while Dean walked from room to room, trailed his fingertips over shelves caked with neglect and opened doors that had been shut for too long, the house was silent. Unmoving. Alone.

He wanted to feel that again. In this position with Sam and his plus one, years after his last visit to the home, molded as he is into a hardened adult, Dean had wanted, if only for a moment, to remember that subtle sense of kinship he felt with the house. 

But even the house has moved on. The barstools have been removed, the wood paneling has been torn down, and the pieces have been pulled away. 

The house no longer exists, but Dean still does.

And Dean is still waiting for it to get easier. 

"That's it," Dean replies.


End file.
